Official Kids Mag www.kidscoop.com © Vicki Whiting December 2021
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What's black and white and loved by kids all over the world?
Pandas, of course! Read on to learn about these gentle creatures.
Can you imagine a world without pandas?
About 2,000 giant pandas live in the wild today.
They are no longer endangered but still vulnerable.
Giant pandas live mainly in the Sichuan
mountains of southwest China, where they
feed on bamboo.
Pandas are losing their habitat. Giant pandas
need forests with lots of bamboo to survive.
These forests are rapidly disappearing as
humans use them to meet their needs.
Giant pandas need to eat a lot of food every day.
They eat day and night, constantly wandering
through the forest eating and eating. Add up the
numbers along the correct path of the maze to
find out roughly how many hours a day one
giant panda can eat.
While bamboo makes up
most of a giant panda's
diet, pandas sometimes eat
small animals. Because of
this small amount of meat
eating, giant pandas are
classified as carnivores.
Scientists debated this for years. About
20 years ago, a group of experts determined
that giant pandas are most
closely related to bears,
although they are also a
lot like raccoons.
Pandas are different from
other bears. For one thing,
they have eyes like a cat.
And their front paws have
an unusual thumb—sometimes called a false
thumb. This is not actually a thumb, like a
human thumb. It is a part of the wrist bone that
sticks out to the side like an extra finger.
The panda is
a symbol of
peace in
China.
Panda
eye
Bear
eye
The Chinese
call the panda
"Da xiong mao,"
which means
"giant bear cat."
2
2
2
1
2
2
1
4
8
7
3
4
6
9
2
5
Standards Link: Life Science: Students know changes in the
environment can be detrimental to organisms.
Standards Link: Number Sense:
Calculate sums to 30.
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